


You Don't Know Me

by Mez10000



Category: Final Fantasy IX
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Game, Spoilers, amnesia-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 05:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20989559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mez10000/pseuds/Mez10000
Summary: Freya and Fratley have a talk about their relationship in the newly rebuilt Burmecia.





	You Don't Know Me

The rain always fell heavy over Burmecia. That one constant had never changed, even as repairs transformed the ruins to a tentatively recovering city. New additions had sprung up; memorials and statues, celebrations of those who had saved the nation alongside reminders of just how much had been lost. Freya wondered exactly which purpose the statue of Fratley was meant to serve.

“Freya?”

Sir Fratley never was far from Freya these days. Although it would be more correct to say that Freya never strayed far from him. She just had a nagging anxious feeling in her gut that if he got too far away, he would slip forever out of her reach and she couldn’t lose what little of him she had left.

“Yes?”

“You aren’t happy.”

It was not a question. He regarded the ripples across the puddles impassively, no anger or sadness obvious in his face. It was a simple observation, and Freya could not bring herself to argue.

“No, I suppose not.”

“I suppose I make a poor imitation of the man you remember.”

Freya tried to protest, but the words stuck in her throat. Fratley was looking at her, but his eyes were devoid of the spark she knew so well. It was the face of a stranger, wearing such a familiar mask that her heartfelt heavy and the lie refused to be spoken aloud.

“I am not an invalid. You need not look after me, not when it pains you so much.”

“But I…”

“My memories may never return. I have accepted that. But it would be the height of cruelty to expect you to care for me purely for the person I once was and not the person I am now.”

Freya felt it claw up her throat, and the words were spat out like an accusation. “I love you!”

Fratley just met her eyes and kept his silence.

“I loved you,” Freya amended, looking away. Better to see the scene in the rain’s glassy reflection than to see the pity in a stranger’s eyes.

“I will always count myself as a friend of Sir Freya Crescent of Burmecia, saviour of Gaia. But as your friend, I must insist that you stop hurting yourself out of some misguided loyalty to me.”

“But…what do I do now?”

It was a jest of a cruel god, Freya supposed. After all these years, she got exactly what she had been striving for, and yet it was a hollow achievement. She had Fratley again, after searching for so long. Burmecia was being rebuilt. Neither of them lived up to her expectations. They simply served as reminders of what she had lost.

The pain was harsh and icy cold, but she could see the wisdom in Fratley’s words, even reeling from their blow. This was a clean pain, like cutting a withered flower so a new one may grow in the coming years. Not like the slow steady crushing she had been desperately trying to ignore since returning to Burmecia.

She wanted to have a life with her beloved, serving her homeland alongside him. At least she wanted to want that life. She had wanted that life, once, and she had tried so desperately to achieve it that she had not realised that at some point, it was no longer what she wanted.

Deep down, Freya knew that the biggest change was not with Fratley or her rebuilt homeland, but within herself. She was all the more different for her travels, and the biggest lie she had told herself was that she could be content with achieving the dreams she had once had. She may not know now exactly what it was she wanted, but she realised with a jolt that it was not here, not anymore.

Fratley shrugged. “That is for you to decide, Freya. I wouldn’t dream of taking that choice from you.”

It would take time for Freya to decide what she needed to do next, but in the end, it seemed obvious. A very ugly kind of symmetry. She would leave Burmecia, this time not to find Sir Fratley, but to find herself.


End file.
